License types

Introduction

This topic explains the various Portworx license types, and how you can use them.

Note: If you have already set up your cluster using any of the paid or free Portworx licenses, you can switch to pay-as-you-go (PAYG) billing by acquiring a PAYG account key from the Pure Storage support team. For more information about switching to PAYG, refer to the pay-as-you-go topic.

Portworx products support the following license types:

License type	Description
Portworx Essentials	Free Portworx license with limited functionality, suitable to run small production or proof-of-concept workloads.
Portworx CSI for FA/FB	Free Portworx license with a limited feature set. It provides essential container storage capabilities for Portworx on FlashArray and FlashBlade and is supported only for DirectAccess.
Trial	Same as the Portworx Enterprise license. It is a default license installed with 30 days trial period for full Portworx Enterprise functionality
Portworx Enterprise VM	Enterprise license, suitable for Virtual Machine (VM) installs on-prem and in cloud
Portworx Enterprise Metal	Enterprise license, suitable for installs on any bare metal hardware

Depending on the type of container you are installing, a different license will be automatically activated. For example, the Portworx Enterprise automatically activates the Trial license (limited to 30 days), which you can upgrade to a Portworx Enterprise license at any time.

Licensed features

In the following table, you can see the overview of features that are controlled via licensing.

License feature	Description	Portworx Essentials	Portworx CSI for FlashArray and FlashBlade	Portworx Enterprise
Number of nodes maximum	Defines the maximum number of nodes in a cluster	5	1000	1000
Number of volumes per cluster maximum	Defines max number of volumes on a single node	200	100000 Pure, 200 Portworx	100000
Volume capacity [TB] maximum	Defines max size of a single volume	1 TB	40 TB	40 TB
Node disk capacity [TB] maximum	Defines max storage capacity of a single node	1 TB	256 TB	256 TB
Node disk capacity extension	Defines is the storage capacity can be extended	no	yes	yes
Number of snapshots per volume maximum	Number of volume snapshots allowed per single volume	5	5	64
Number of attached volumes per node maximum	Number of attached volumes on a single node	30	128	256
Storage aggregation	Defines if volumes may be aggregated across multiple nodes	no	no	yes
Shared volumes	Defines if volumes may be shared w/ other nodes	yes	yes	yes
Volume sets	Defines if volumes may be scaled	yes	yes	yes
BYOK data encryption	“Bring your own key” for data encryption	yes	yes	yes
Limit BYOK encryption to cluster-wide secrets	Limits the use of data-encryption keys to only a cluster-wide secrets	limited	limited	unlimited
Resize volumes on demand	Defines if volumes can be resized	yes	yes	yes
Snapshot to object store [CloudSnap]	Defines if cloud-snapshots can be used (for example, volume snapshot to Amazon S3 service)	yes	yes	yes
Number of CloudSnaps daily per volume maximum	Limits how many cloud-snapshots can customers do (per volume, in a day)	1	1	unlimited
Cluster-level migration [Kube-motion/Data Migration]	Defines if the Data Migration can be used, see Data Migration	no	no	yes
Disaster Recovery [PX-DR]	Enables synchronous and asynchronous DR features (requires 2.1 version or later, needs additional license)	no	no	(AddOn required)
Autopilot Capacity Management	Defines if Autopilot can be used	no	no	yes
OIDC Security	Defines if PX-Security can be used, see PX-Security on an existing cluster	no	no	yes
Bare-metal hosts	Software may be deployed on commodity hardware	yes	yes	yes
Virtual machine hosts	Software may be deployed on VMs (including Amazon EC2, OpenStack Nova)	yes	yes	yes

Trial License

The trial license activates automatically when the Portworx Enterprise license is installed. The trial license provides the full product functionality for 30 days.

DESCRIPTION                  ENABLEMENT  ADDITIONAL INFO
Number of nodes maximum         1000
Number of volumes maximum       1024
Volume capacity [TB] maximum      40
Storage aggregation              yes
Shared volumes                   yes
Volume sets                      yes
BYOK data encryption             yes
Resize volumes on demand         yes
Snapshot to object store         yes
Bare-metal hosts                 yes
Virtual machine hosts            yes
Product SKU                     Trial    expires in 6 days, 20:40

Trial license expiration

After the trial period expires, you cannot create new volumes or volume snapshots. You can restore normal functionality by purchasing and installing a Portworx Enterprise license.

Licensing operations